The silver, braided hose is shown in this picture near the Columbus module.
NASA officials likely will decide Saturday whether a kinked Freon hose could delay the Feb. 7 launch of Atlantis to the International Space Station.
Engineers will continue to study the flexible hose on a payload door of Atlantis, even as the Executive Flight Readiness Review cleared all other issues for launch.
"Hopefully, we will come to the conclusion this is OK to fly at least one flight," said shuttle program manager Wayne Hale.
"It's supposed to be straight. It's in good shape, it's bending the wrong way," said Hale. He said engineers must answer a simple question: "Can we merely straighten out this hose and live with it?"
A similarly kinked hose was found on Discovery but not on Endeavour.
Discovery has flown at least two missions with the kinked hose. The radiator system provides cooling during launch and reentry. However, the danger of it breaking during the next mission is not known. A backup system exists, and if the hose broke, the system could be isolated.
"Then you wouldn't have a redundant Freon management system," NASA spokesman George Diller said.
On the low-fuel sensor issue, NASA managers decided to keep a launch criteria of three of four sensors working, even though they believe they have found the root cause of intermittent sensor readings that scrubbed launch attempts on Dec. 6 and 9.
"I have a high degree of confidence we have solved this problem," said Hale.
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